Nato Enlargement and the Spread of Democracy: Evidence and Expectations

Abstract

The second enlargement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since the end of the cold war fueled an ongoing debate over whether the alliance contributes to democratization in Europe. In the 1990s, critics warned that the 1999 NATO enlargement would cultivate a new cold war and prove irrelevant to democratic consolidation in central Europe. Events have not borne out these forecasts, however. In Poland, not only did NATO build a civilian consensus in favor of democratic control over the armed forces corresponding to NATO norms, but it also delegitimized Polish arguments for defense self-sufficiency that had derived their credibility from Poland's experience of military vulnerability and foreign domination. Such democratizing and denationalizing trends have contributed to stability in postcommunist Europe. An assessment of the seven states that joined in 2004 similarly reveals some scope for NATO's influence in all cases. The alliance's access to domestic reform processes, however, will be uneven across cases in ways largely consistent with the predictions of the theoretical framework in this article. Rachel A. Epstein is assistant professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver.